ethics

Wisdom Is Taboo — And Why That Matters Now. https://livingartswisdom.substack.com/p/wisdom-is-taboo-and-why-that-matters

Neither King Nor Mob. INTRODUCTION 
Neither King Nor Mob
I first encountered American politics as an argument, not a spectacle.
At fifteen, I read The Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist responses. I didn’t know then that I was being inducted into the oldest debate in the republic: whether liberty dies from chaos or from control. Hamilton feared disorder. Brutus feared tyranny. Both feared human nature. Both were right.
What struck me even then was not how different they were, but how similar. Each side believed the other would destroy the nation. Each side spoke in moral urgency. Each side thought compromise was dangerous. Two hundred and fifty years later, we use better microphones, but we say the same things.
My parents were Democrats who became Reagan voters after Jimmy Carter. My mother listened to Rush Limbaugh in the kitchen. I later became a libertarian, joined the Free State Project, and eventually drifted into what I now call the “leave me alone” branch of political thought. I voted for Republicans, Libertarians, and once, reluctantly, for Donald Trump—whom I disliked even as I marked the ballot.
That list of votes is not a contradiction. It is a record of a citizen trying to preserve a principle while the language of politics kept changing around him.
This book is not an argument for a party. It is an argument for a way of thinking that once defined American political life and now seems almost extinct: the belief that law should be neutral, power should be limited, speech should be free, and citizens should be treated as adults rather than moral projects.
The Permanent Emergency
Every generation believes it is living through the most dangerous moment in history. This is not arrogance; it is biology. Fear sharpens memory. Crisis simplifies stories. When politics becomes a permanent emergency, nuance becomes treason and doubt becomes cowardice.
Today, we are told that everything is existential: elections, words, borders, opinions, even jokes. The left warns of fascism. The right warns of invasion. Both claim moral necessity. Both demand loyalty. Both insist that the rules must bend for the sake of survival.
This is not new. Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. Woodrow Wilson jailed dissenters. Franklin Roosevelt interned citizens. George W. Bush built a surveillance state. Barack Obama expanded it. Donald Trump personalized power. Joe Biden moralized bureaucracy.
Different faces. Same logic: the crisis justifies the exception.
The founders anticipated this. James Madison warned that faction would be the greatest threat to liberty—not foreign enemies, but domestic certainty. A faction, he wrote, is any group “united and actuated by some common impulse of passion…adverse to the rights of other citizens.”
In other words, when politics becomes about moral identity instead of shared rules, liberty becomes collateral damage.
Immigration as a Moral Battlefield
Few issues reveal this transformation more clearly than immigration.
Once, it was a policy debate: how many, how fast, under what rules. Now it is a moral theater. One side speaks only of compassion. The other speaks only of threat. The human being disappears into the symbol.
In this new language, even legal categories become taboo. The phrase “criminal alien” is treated as a slur rather than a legal description. Enforcement becomes cruelty. Mercy becomes lawlessness. Every position is interpreted as hatred or betrayal.
Yet some of the most uncomfortable voices in this debate come not from native-born Americans, but from Black immigrants who followed the rules, waited years, and sacrificed to enter legally. They do not oppose immigration. They oppose erasing the meaning of legality. They ask a simple question: What was the point of doing it right?
That question cannot be answered with slogans. It requires a political philosophy capable of holding two truths at once: human dignity and rule of law. We once had such a language. We lost it.
Outrage as Industry
Modern politics does not merely exploit fear. It depends on it.
Rush Limbaugh pioneered the monetization of outrage. Cable news refined it. Social media perfected it. Algorithms learned that anger travels farther than reason and loyalty lasts longer than curiosity. Today, political conflict is not a failure of the system; it is the system.
Both parties need enemies. Both need emergencies. Both need moral absolutes. A calm citizen is a bad customer.
This is why moderation feels invisible. The middle has no merchandise. There is no market for “I’m uncertain.” There is no applause for “both sides might be wrong.” Tribalism pays better than thinking.
What emerges is a politics that looks religious: saints and sinners, heresy and orthodoxy, excommunication and conversion narratives. We no longer argue to persuade. We argue to signal belonging.
The Orphaned Philosophy
Classical liberalism—once the dominant American instinct—has become politically homeless.
It believed:
The law should be impersonal.
Power should be restrained.
Speech should be free.
Citizens should be responsible.
The state should be limited.
Differences should be tolerated.
This philosophy is now attacked from both directions. The right distrusts liberty when it threatens order. The left distrusts liberty when it threatens justice. Both distrust neutrality. Both believe power must be wielded for moral ends.
The “leave me alone” citizen is therefore suspect to all tribes. He is accused of indifference when he is actually defending boundaries: between state and citizen, between law and emotion, between disagreement and evil.
How to Stay Sane Without a Tribe
This book is not a manifesto. It is a diagnosis and a survival guide.
It explores:
Why “leave me alone” keeps resurfacing in history.
How immigration became a moral war instead of a policy question.
Why outrage now fuels both parties.
How a citizen can remain humane, rational, and free in a culture that rewards hysteria.
It does not pretend neutrality is easy. It is not. Independence is lonely. Skepticism is tiring. But it is the only posture that preserves both liberty and decency.
To reject the mob is not to reject morality. It is to insist that morality must be lived by individuals, not enforced by crusades.
Neither King Nor Mob
The American experiment was never about perfection. It was about restraint: restraining rulers, restraining majorities, restraining certainty itself.
We are now tempted by two ancient solutions:
The strongman who promises order.
The crowd who promises righteousness.
Both destroy liberty in different ways.
This book argues for a third path: the old one. The path of law over passion, humility over certainty, and liberty over fear. Not because it is fashionable, but because it is necessary.
I do not trust mobs.
I do not trust kings.
I trust rules, neighbors, and the quiet dignity of being left alone.
That faith is not radical. It is American.

UpTrust

DownTrust

No other choice. If it is indeed wrong to say out loud that I do not trust Jews anymore, then that will just have to be something I learn to live with like I do genocide, ethnic cleansing, pedophilia and the deliberate murder of world central kitchen and other aid workers. Israel is a savage and degenerate ally, a child killing lying thieving nation state , a menace to all of humanity and friend to no one...Especially Americans!

Engage or Enrage. It is likely that we have family members or friends that we differ with greatly when it comes to politics, healthcare, etc.  I am no different.  When the inevitable hot topic arises, do you recommend flight or fight, engage or enrage?  How do you respond when this occurs?

Great charts on polarization and echo-chambers in the USA. Six-Chart Sunday – Where You Sit Is Where You Stand - by some guy named Bruce Mehlman on Substack

• 90% of Republicans approved of President Trump’s job performance mid-April (~85 days in), tied for the highest own party approval at this point in the term per Hart Research. 

• Much partisan difference in approval of / confidence in presidents results from getting news from different sources

• We wildly mis-estimate the views of those in the other party. As a result of partisan media, online echo-chambers, and demagogic politicians in both parties, we have very inaccurate understandings of the viewpoints of those on the other side. 

Great charts on polarization and echo-chambers in the USA. Six-Chart Sunday – Where You Sit Is Where You Stand - by some guy named Bruce Mehlman on Substack

• 90% of Republicans approved of President Trump’s job performance mid-April (~85 days in), tied for the highest own party approval at this point in the term per Hart Research. 

• Much partisan difference in approval of / confidence in presidents results from getting news from different sources

• We wildly mis-estimate the views of those in the other party. As a result of partisan media, online echo-chambers, and demagogic politicians in both parties, we have very inaccurate understandings of the viewpoints of those on the other side. 

Averse to one metric judgments?

Disasters as Political Fodder. Recently, a family member asked me if I knew about the LA fires.  I said "yes, it's terrible".  And they said "and they've proven that the fires were started by immigrants."  I burst out laughing derisively and said "yes, if they'd just shoot all the immigrants, everything would be fine."  It was not one of my finer moments, as sarcasm does't invite connection or understanding.  It invites the opposite, actually. 

When the plane and helicopter collided over the Potomac River a couple weeks ago, killing everyone, immediately the news was about the incompetence of air traffic controllers and the increasing treachery of flying brought on by lowering standards and selecting unqualified minorities and women for air traffic controller jobs.  This was without any data, any analysis, that indicated air traffic control was at fault. There was a dumb, affirmative action policy put in place years ago, that was then abandoned years ago.  That's what the news highighted.   

The Left uses disasters as fodder for their purposes as well.  They aren't in controll of the narative right now, so I'm writing about what's here.  Politics are wicked.  I remember that, after the election, I was going to sit back and watch the political theatre unfolding while eating a metaphorical bowl of popcorn.  I'm not sure if that's the right thing to do, as what's happening is distressing, but I can't find any political action that would be effective.  

What I do know is that the investment of our time in people, through Relatefulness and Uptrust, is real, powerful, joyful work for something good and true.  I am resting on that. 

AI inevitably will change the film industry forever. Deal with it. . Many of my friends in the film industry HATE AI.  The hate the fact that AI will collapse the status quo in the industry.  For some reason they prefer the studios to gate keep everything.  I just don't get it.  AI filmmaking will democratize the art and allow anyone create movies.  Sure there will be a lot of slop, but as in all things, the cream will rise to the top.  I'm a screenwriter and I already see how AI threatens what I do. But instead of cursing the darkness, I'm teaching myself to use AI.  I'm trying to ride the tsunami instead of being washed away by it.

Incorruptible Organizations AMA with Eric Ries. Wednesday 2/4 at 3:00 PM CT

Lean Startup author who now focuses on legal structures to protect mission-driven organizations from corruption. incorruptible.co

Free book giveaway! Register here.

Engage or Enrage. It is likely that we have family members or friends that we differ with greatly when it comes to politics, healthcare, etc.  I am no different.  When the inevitable hot topic arises, do you recommend flight or fight, engage or enrage?  How do you respond when this occurs?

If people cannot change the commodities society depends on, then protest alone will never produce lasting change.

Protest is good at signaling pain.
It is not designed to reroute capital.

That’s not a moral judgment. It’s a structural one.

Modern power does not primarily respond to outrage. It responds to demand signals, procurement contracts, financing structures, and commodity dependency. As long as the same materials flow through the same systems, the same outcomes repeat, regardless of who is in office or what slogans trend.

This is why so many movements burn hot and fade.
They change language, but not inputs.
They change narratives, but not supply chains.
They raise awareness, but leave money flowing exactly where it always has.

Real change begins when money moves differently.

Jobs follow commodities.
Communities follow jobs.
Political behavior follows economic reality.

My work focuses on building that missing middle layer, where social intention becomes economic participation. Through platforms like nowweevolve.com and thebioeconomyfoundation.org, I’m working on redirecting consumer demand, public funding, and private capital toward regenerative materials and domestic production systems that create real work, especially in rural communities.

This isn’t anti-protest. It’s post-protest.

If we want durable change, we have to give people a way to participate economically in the solution. Not just speak, but buy, build, fund, and work their way into a different system.

Social change scales when money flow changes.
Everything else is commentary.

Engage or Enrage. It is likely that we have family members or friends that we differ with greatly when it comes to politics, healthcare, etc.  I am no different.  When the inevitable hot topic arises, do you recommend flight or fight, engage or enrage?  How do you respond when this occurs?